Comment 10 for bug 199069

I agree with Mantas. Tie launchpad handles to a single user for all time, and allow changes only under special circumstances.

I'd like to see launchpad encourage folks to build reputation in human-friendly launchpad openids, based on handles.

And yes, you'll also want to provide privacy-protecting options, since there are privacy-sensitive use cases also. But there are many many use cases (blog posts, use by loco web sites, etc) in which users and sysadmins will prefer human-friendly openids to something opaque.

There are also many reasons for wanting launchpad handles to be immutable, since they show up in many contexts already. Yes, there will be some "good" handles that eventually go unused, but the handle namespace is big and people can be creative. Yes, you'll need to prevent people from making too many changes of handle so they don't spoil good handles.

But launchpad needs to support both the public and the private use cases.